plastic, polymeric material that has the capability of being molded or shaped, usually by the application of heat and pressure. This property of plasticity, often found in combination with other special properties such as low density, low electrical conductivity, transparency, and toughness, allows plastics to be made into a great variety of products. These include tough and lightweight beverage bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), flexible garden hoses made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), insulating food containers made of foamed polystyrene, and shatterproof windows made of polymethyl methacrylate.

In this article a brief review of the essential properties of plastics is provided, followed by a more detailed description of their processing into useful products and subsequent recycling. For a fuller understanding of the materials from which plastics are made, seechemistry of industrial polymers.

The composition, structure, and properties of plastics

Many of the chemical names of the polymers employed as plastics have become familiar to consumers, although some are better known by their abbreviations or trade names. Thus, polyethylene terephthalate and polyvinyl chloride are commonly referred to as PET and PVC, while foamed polystyrene and polymethyl methacrylate are known by their trademarked names, Styrofoam and Plexiglas (or Perspex).

Industrial fabricators of plastic products tend to think of plastics as either “commodity” resins or “specialty” resins. (The term resin dates from the early years of the plastics industry; it originally referred to naturally occurring amorphous solids such as shellac and rosin.) Commodity resins are plastics that are produced at high volume and low cost for the most common disposable items and durable goods. They are represented chiefly by polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, and polystyrene. Specialty resins are plastics whose properties are tailored to specific applications and that are produced at low volume and higher cost. Among this group are the so-called engineering plastics, or engineering resins, which are plastics that can compete with die-cast metals in plumbing, hardware, and automotive applications. Important engineering plastics, less familiar to consumers than the commodity plastics listed above, are polyacetal, polyamide (particularly those known by the trade name nylon), polytetrafluoroethylene (trademark Teflon), polycarbonate, polyphenylene sulfide, epoxy, and polyetheretherketone. Another member of the specialty resins is thermoplastic elastomers, polymers that have the elastic properties of rubber yet can be molded repeatedly upon heating. Thermoplastic elastomers are described in the article elastomer.

Plastics also can be divided into two distinct categories on the basis of their chemical composition. One category is plastics that are made up of polymers having only aliphatic (linear) carbon atoms in their backbone chains. All the commodity plastics listed above fall into this category. The structure of polypropylene can serve as an example; here attached to every other carbon atom is a pendant methyl group (CH3):

The other category of plastics is made up of heterochain polymers. These compounds contain atoms such as oxygen, nitrogen, or sulfur in their backbone chains, in addition to carbon. Most of the engineering plastics listed above are composed of heterochain polymers. An example would be polycarbonate, whose molecules contain two aromatic (benzene) rings:

The distinction between carbon-chain and heterochain polymers is reflected in the table, in which selected properties and applications of the most important carbon-chain and heterochain plastics are shown and from which links are provided directly to entries that describe these materials in greater detail. It is important to note that for each polymer type listed in the table there can be many subtypes, since any of a dozen industrial producers of any polymer can offer 20 or 30 different variations for use in specific applications. For this reason the properties indicated in the table must be taken as approximations.

*All values shown are for glass-fibre-reinforced samples (except for polyurethane).

For the purposes of this article, plastics are primarily defined not on the basis of their chemical composition but on the basis of their engineering behaviour. More specifically, they are defined as either thermoplastic resins or thermosetting resins.

Polymers are chemical compounds whose molecules are very large, often resembling long chains made up of a seemingly endless series of interconnected links. The size of these molecules, as is explained in chemistry of industrial polymers, is extraordinary, ranging in the thousands and even millions of atomic mass units (as opposed to the tens of atomic mass units commonly found in other chemical compounds). The size of the molecules, together with their physical state and the structures that they adopt, are the principal causes of the unique properties associated with plastics—including the ability to be molded and shaped.

As mentioned above, polymers that are classified as plastics can be divided into two major categories: thermoplastics and thermosets. Thermoplastics such as polyethylene and polystyrene are capable of being molded and remolded repeatedly. Thus, a foamed-polystyrene cup can be heated and reshaped into a new form—for instance, a dish. The polymer structure associated with thermoplastics is that of individual molecules that are separate from one another and flow past one another. The molecules may have low or extremely high molecular weight, and they may be branched or linear in structure, but the essential feature is that of separability and consequent mobility.

Thermosets, on the other hand, cannot be reprocessed upon reheating. During their initial processing, thermosetting resins undergo a chemical reaction that results in an infusible, insoluble network. Essentially, the entire heated, finished article becomes one large molecule. For example, the epoxy polymer used in making a fibre-reinforced laminate for a golf club undergoes a cross-linking reaction when it is molded at a high temperature. Subsequent application of heat does not soften the material to the point where it can be reworked and indeed may serve only to break it down.

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